Moderator(s): Scott Ramming, Colorado Department of Transportation

Session Description
As travel demand modeling continues to evolve, transportation agencies—especially in small and medium-sized communities—are embracing innovative tools and collaborative platforms to enhance regional planning and forecasting. This session highlights four practical approaches that make advanced modeling more accessible, scalable, and transparent.

Learn how the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments (PPACG) built a collaborative land use and socioeconomic forecasting process to support multi-jurisdictional growth planning through an interactive dashboard. Explore a new R Shiny web tool that helps estimate trip generation at special sites using historical data and real-time analytics, designed to support communities without site-specific surveys.

Finally, attendees will also be introduced to ABM-Lite, a novel framework that enables regions with limited resources to transition from trip-based to activity-based modeling by integrating existing OD matrices with open-source tools and synthetic populations.

Together, these tools and approaches demonstrate how data innovation and collaboration can modernize planning processes and support better transportation outcomes for diverse regions.